China's Electric Cars No Better Than Ours

If you follow the electric car market, you may have noticed a curious business phenomenon taking place in China. Leaders there are said to be scaling back plans for selling 500,000 electric vehicles (EVs) per year by 2015. The problem, it seems, is that the new breed of EVs are selling sluggishly.

"Developers have yet to achieve breakthroughs and will be lucky to sell 2,000 cars this year, mostly taxis. The government has hedged its bets by broadening the industry's official goals to include cleaner gasoline engines," according to a recent Associated Press article on the subject. "Officials including Premier Wen Jiabao started acknowledging last year that progress was slow and developers need to improve quality instead of rushing models to market."

Electric vehicle sales are sluggish in China. (Source: BYD)

For many EV proponents, China's struggle with EV technology must come as a surprise. For years, the electric car cognoscenti have been warning us about falling behind in the EV race. In a 2010 article called "Their Moon Shot and Ours," Thomas Friedman of the New York Times notably urged US leaders to keep up with China. "Moore's Law of electric cars" would enable the electric car battery's cost per mile to be "cut in half every 18 months."

But there is no Moore's Law of electric cars. That may be why EVs and EV batteries aren't doing very well in the US, either. Sales of the Chevy Volt have been slow. Nissan sold 370 Leafs in April, 579 in March, and 478 in February. A123 Systems, an EV battery maker that was granted up to $249 million in funding from the Department of Energy, posted a first-quarter net loss of $125 million and is said to be struggling.

Moreover, as we've reported before, industry analysts expect huge lithium-ion battery gluts over the next few years. Bloomberg News reported recently that venture capitalists are hesitant to lend support for EV-based efforts. "The only thing that would cause America to be all electric cars is to lose the economic trade war with China and have it imposed on us," a venture capitalist told Bloomberg.

If there's a lesson in all this, it's that EV development is difficult everywhere. China doesn't have a magic bullet, any more than we do.

"There's a general view that, if you throw money at it, you can do whatever you want," David Cole, chairman emeritus of the Center for Automotive Research, told us. "But this technology isn't at that point yet." Cole and many other engineers in the auto industry have repeatedly told us that hybrids and plug-in hybrids are still needed to serve as a bridge to the electric car, which may not be ready for prime time for many years. Even then, Cole has said that plug-in hybrids, such as the Volt, will need to bring their MSRPs down by about 40 percent before they can be really competitive.

I suspect that if you canvassed engineers around the auto industry, you'd find that many agree with the Chinese belief that it's best not to rush models to market. At this point, investments in basic and applied battery research might be wiser than funding commercial products. The reason for that is the same as it has been for 100 years: If you can't build a battery that's remotely competitive with gasoline, it's going to be hard to wean consumers from their internal combustion engines.

Even in China.

Related posts:

For a close-up look at GM's Chevy Volt, go to the Drive for Innovation site and follow the cross-country journey of EE Life editorial director Brian Fuller.

Actually, yes. They did exceed their Constitutional authority with NASA. I love NASA. John Glenn himself sent me a letter after his inaugural space flight telling me I was too tall to be an astronaut, so I have history with the program. That doesn't make it right.

Show me the Constitutional authority for NASA, health care, social security, proportional taxes (the amendment never passed, actually) and all the other illegal central government power grabbing. As you can see, today space travel can be handled by individuals or companies. You might stretch space as a military necessity, and I would agree, so NASA just might meet some of the criteria, but certainly not private automobiles. Let the States decide. If silly California wants to go into space let it. If they want to only allow electric cars that go 30 miles on a charge, let them. After all, we are the United STATES of America.

warren@fourward.com; So what is your opinion of NASA ? Did the government exceed its authority in spending Millions (Billions ?) of dollars on the innovations and technology necessary to get into space and to the Moon ? How do you determine which innovations and technology are worthwhile ?

thrashercharged; So you also find jackiecox difficult to read / make sense of. You may not know that he is the most intelligent person in the world, but I would not accuse him of being the most humble. He does make some interesting points, but he loses me when he descends into his rabid political rantings.

Its fun to watch the battery operated helicopters, in our shopping centers, and easy to think it could be enlarged,,,,,,unless you get into the matter of scale considering frequencies, and amplitudes, materials, processes, designs, etc etc, to accomplish the seemingly same work, where the subject to be moved and controlled weighs a few tons, then the problem of scale cpmes to light, and its many variables, few have the patience to master. one of the last, if not the greatest,The last really great scientific team 50 years in development, were the shuttle 2 engineering design team, designing and building shuttle 1. capable of leaving earths magnetosphere, moving independently, servicing chandra, hubble and space station, then as suddenly as it appeared they were dismantled, their budget going to inner city social services, or so-called privatization, like spacex and elon musk, the iron man, in the movie, displaying him along with other marvel science fiction, that it has become. sad to watch america destroyed, by executive order and affirmative action, but I lived here before free trde, afirmative action, and occupation by criminals, when our independent america, making what we consumed, exporting to the world with jobs for all, accrued taxation filling our treasuries as we helped the world to a better place in time. Now I watch our treasuries looted, free trade eliminating accrued taxation used to support our infrastructure, and wonder how on earth a senate and congress, can assist this man destroying our country, on purpose---I am not a troll---I simply voted for John McCain, as did our majorityof individual voters, but the 2008 ACORN new polling stations committed our nations only known really big election fraud, and with the unsurper in power there is no one to prosecute him, as he prepares for the next election fraud, simultaneously china, a communist country enslaves its citizens using free trade as an economic weapon to take our companies from us and shutter our small family business economy, with its super slave goods stores, I watch the walton family take what 30 % of our entire domestic workforce earn, and see what slavery does to all free nations on earth who fall for free trade, eliminating import taxation that was put in place to protect us from slavery, while insuring our independence. McCain was gonna end affirmative action, Palin was gonna end lobbies, who stuff a few million inn each corrupt senator and congressman to look the other way allowing slavery to enter our nation, while we sit by and watch our nation decline continually downward, Our Rights taken from us by the Lawyers, Judges, lobbies, politicians, I am angry, but apparantly not as angry as MS 13, or the worlds youth, when faced without hope, become determined to end its very source---and they will---one way or another

programming in the days of punched cards as you state were coded 180 column, 13 row cards, or data storage, for the key punches and verifiers, hard wired boards for the;sorters, collaters, reproducers, accounting machines, printers to hookup the accounting machines to the reproducers and do gang punching for things like payroll, or inventories were very hard, Perhaps you have forgotten, but FORTRAN and COBAL only came into use in 1st generation 1401 systems, as did the high speed sorters 2,000 cards a minute, when a jam, could destroy sometimes more than a dozen cards, that had to be deciphered and re-keypunched/verified, by eye sight. evolving in time and too many languages into the perl and other internet programming languages of today I am sorry you have trouble understanding any of my wording, or meanings, with the words seemingly all jumbled up to you, but, Hey, its like that, no one is the same. Some of us are educated by academia, and accustomed to the formalities of the academic caste system, or academic ventures, while people like me, who quit school in grade 11, were given GED tests, Mine was a grade equivelent of 15.7 years. so they sent me into one year naval intel training, in the old days of DIO's, mine was Seattle, hdqtrs 13th naval district, then when I got a commendation for cuban missle crisis, they assigned me to naval schools, the first OM/IM school for 8 weeks as I remember, then another 8 weeks of Optical School, to study repair or replacement of optonavigational equipment, on subs and surface ships, the instructors said it was more than equivelent to physics school, hard too, 8 hours of class, and 4 hours of study each night, 50 % dropout rate, then a one year computer school,worse, in the transition from electric computers, or many machines, doing the same as electronic generation equipment, where smaller and smaller amounts of energy was required to do the same things, and computer languages began, much simpler than hard wired boards, IBM or International Business Machines, was/is a company that sold to the world, even hitler used their machines to manage his productions, inventory control, scheduling, etc. Most of the people from these computer days are gone now so its little wonder you have a problem trying to figure out things you are unaware of. I got out of navy at age 21, went to work with industrial engineering consuting fims where they taught me one on one, My best trainer was Harold Bramer, from Albert Raymond and Assoc. Chicago.(he setup the whitman candy company) an old man he taught me time study and data development in both direct and indirect labour and the normal chain of commands, or arrangment of work in engineering design and manufacturing companies, like West Bend Aluminum, when they employed thousands of people, now in china, Rolph and Amity leather, leather goods, hide utilization studies in logic, Pauline and Harnishfager, P & H in Milwaukee, Where the equipment is designed around the mining requirements, difficult to export to slave countries, like Manitowoc Engineering, or the worlds largest manufacturer of tower cranes, they bought out Potaine, from france, and Grove Machinery, telescoping lift cranes, and have even gone into big refrigeration equipment, LTV ot Ling Tempco Voight, who made the avengers for vietnam, was fun to study planes or aerodynamics,etc etc but, similar to NASA, Lawyers came into play, I went to universities across the country, studying whatever I wanted. 2/3rds of americas manufacturing infrastructure have gone to slave countries, as we embrace slavery in the things we consume, losing our independence along the way---I did however keep up somewhat with most things still american, and even worked at the worlds first chip plant, Northern Electric, canada where we melted black quartz at 800 degrees celcius, smelting silicon, first used in printed circuit boards replacing hard wired telephone switching stations. first Microsystems, then the plant moved to penang malasia, leaving fairchild, and texas instruments to duke it out together trying to manufacture the worlds first PC which IBM designed but the patent tribunals refused to allow them to make their designs stating monolopy issues, they used the computer architecture we used to develop the worlds first PC which is similar to a telephone switching station, because each PCi is just another telephone number evolving into a data transceiver, which can alter the data, then optics came along with led's. Yep yer right about the seeming intermingling of so many different isssues, but its like that, if you can't keep up you fall behind, kinda like now, as we become a nation engaged in slavery and shunns the worlds latest instrumentation, because it threatens the status qou's power, as the rulers elevate themselves into virtual nobility---what on earth would they do, if instrumentation capable of storing all the known variables, then resourcing these variables, to avoid misdiagnosis, and wrongful prosecution---seriously the legal-medical-insurancefraud-extortion mafia, given credentials by the academic ventures, are to a large equivalent the concealed nobility, and become placed on the ballot boxes in our democrazy system, ruled by the world class mafia, or a mixture of some 250 dynasties (families) a club you can be a hireling for, or slave to, but you cannot join. Its taken a long time to organize all these dynasties, then along comes the empirical matrix, and computing power, that enable the intetnet, or connecting all the phone numbers together, whereby any kid who can spell, fueled by interest self educates him/herself magnitudes of literacy above our worlds rulers, a situation where information doubles every few years that used to take centuries----only to witness a repeat of history, as nobility resurrects itself, through things like the fed, the kids resurrect anarchy, which will surely eliminate nobility, one way or another, no one is going to punk anyone else out, self claiming to be superior to anyone else, credentials are less than meaningless, they are dangerous,, along with most of the academic system that enables the pseudo-legality of city, county, state, federal, International, tribunals, courts, UN's call them anything, but never ever mention the reality of Nobility, Slaves, and hirelings---Hey guy, whoever, whatever you are, I could care less if you have the mentality to actually read conplicated things as they exist, or call it jumbled up words, exposing you pretense of understanding logic, for the sheer stupidity it is

You say "the electric car cognoscenti," but you should say "the electric car consigliere!" The government has no business telling us what to buy and wasting our great-grandchildren's money on "innovations" we, and the technology are not ready for. Batteries are one issue, charging them is another, and affording a car that goes a few miles before the bunny dies is silly.

jackiecox - you may be the most intelligent person in the world but I'll never know it because I'm not smart enough to figure out how to decipher your misspellings and run-on sentences into anything that makes sense to me.

I'd love to read your thoughts that you've obviously taken much time to write, but honestly I'm not able to wade through the misspellings, oddly placed punctuation (or lack of) and lack of sentence structure. I'm just not able to make sense of your writings - sorry.

I'm not angry by any means, just disappointed that I'm not able to understand what you've taken the time to write, and I'm probably not the only one. Shorter sentences would help. And please - how about breaking up your thoughts into paragraphs? That'll help those of us with this particular reading disability greatly.

Jerry dycus; I watch the EV market intermittently. The E-Rex was an interesting article, but I have no idea how practical, or impractical it might be. I saw the Aptera and thought it looked interesting, but only available in California, and now not at all. And I think the RAV-4 all-electric is initially available in Calirornia only. Many years ago I bought plans for an electric adaptable TriMuter. It would have required a better workshop and better fiberglassing skills than I have.

So you found my 20 yr old first EV done in wood/epoxy!! Funky isn't it. Yet it ran for yrs for $2/week in all costs. It did total a compact car that rearended me at 25mph. I walked away unhurt and only cost $40 to get back on the road. It was designed to rise when hit so the hitting car slid under it, vectoring the forces away from me. The pics are after the accident.

Google freedomev and click images and the black vehicle is my body/chassis with wheels stuck where needed.

I'll get a website up when I've got it closer to selling it.

No an existing design is not cheaper as they need far more EV drive, battery plus the new car cost.

The T-Rex is a bad joke, badly designed with terrible CG placement and way too costly. Looks cool though but not practical. Mine is an enclosed sportwagon that is less that 50% it's cost and 5x's as eff with useful cargo room. Plus one doesn't have to be an acrobat to get in and out of.

One VC offered me a $10/hr job at their factory for my design!! So please don't give me the VC is great line, BTDT. His contract basically would have me signing away all my designs for life as it was written. Needless to say I told him where to put it. I don't mind them making a profit but they want it all and more.

Luckily new capital sources like Kickstarter are filling in the gap as is self funding.

Jerry dycus; Maybe part of it is the venture capitalists don't think they can make $1,000.000.00 profit in the first year from your design. Because they are in it for the return on investment.

I think T-Rex is making a prototype E-Rex. Supposedly a motorcycle-tricycle with 2 wheels up front and electric instead of the Kawasaki motorcycle engine. But they have no plans to sell the electric version, yet.

The crash safety and other regulations and testing are more stringent and costly for a car vs. a motorcycle. So an existing car body design could be cheaper to convert to electric than a fresh slate.

A quick internet search showed the Electric Woody. Do you have a web site for your current design ?

Some cars are more reliable than others, but even the vehicles at the bottom of this year’s Consumer Reports reliability survey are vastly better than those of 20 years ago in the key areas of powertrain and hardware, experts said this week.

As it does every year, Consumers Union recently surveyed its members on the reliability of their vehicles. This year, it collected data on approximately 1.1 million cars and trucks, categorizing the members’ likes and dislikes, not only of their vehicles, but of the vehicle sub-systems, as well.

A few weeks ago, Ford Motor Co. quietly announced that it was rolling out a new wrinkle to the powerful safety feature called stability control, adding even more lifesaving potential to a technology that has already been very successful.

Focus on Fundamentals consists of 45-minute on-line classes that cover a host of technologies. You learn without leaving the comfort of your desk. All classes are taught by subject-matter experts and all are archived. So if you can't attend live, attend at your convenience.